Jim Webb speaks of his grandparents in Arkansas during the depression..

madfloridian

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Sun Jul-29-07 10:13 PM
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Jim Webb speaks of his grandparents in Arkansas during the depression..

I remember my grandparents speaking of those hard times. This hit home with me.

Sen. Jim Webb is talking about his mother's family, which lived in hardscrabble eastern Arkansas during the Great Depression and was so poor "there was nothing -- not even money." The Democrats built their party around such people, Webb is saying, while the Republicans never cared about them.

Jim Webb and the Populist Pitch

He then quotes a little from the group Alabama's Song of the South.

"Well somebody told us Wall Street fell,

But we were so poor that we couldn't tell.

Cotton was short and the weeds were tall.

But Mr. Roosevelt's a-gonna save us all."

Webb worries though that many Democrats at the top are not getting the message. It is good to hear him speaking out.

That kind of populist anger is part of the Democrats' past, and Webb argues that it's the party's future as well. But he worries that "the people at the top of the party don't comprehend the power of that message" and that as a result the Democrats may miss their best chance in a generation to reconnect with the American middle class.

"The Democrats need to embrace the fact that the greatest issue in America today is economic fairness," he says. He argues that if the Democrats construct a "fairness agenda" that tilts toward workers and away from corporations and the rich, "they will win big." John Edwards hasn't had much luck so far with the issue, which he has made the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. But some influential Democrats, including former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, share the focus on fairness.

Webb has had harsh words before for Rubinomics (as in Robert Rubin).

Rejecting the Rubin wing of the party.

"He criticized what he called 'the Rubin wing of the Democratic Party,' after Robert E. Rubin, former President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary, saying those Democrats share the same problem as many Republicans: 'We're not paying attention to what has happened to basic working people in the country.' He said of the freshman Senate Democrats, six of them take a 'populist' view, and said they are bringing needed reinforcements to the Senate: 'We've got a number of us that pretty well see the economic issues the same way. I think that's the Democratic Party of the future."

More lyrics from Song of the South

Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch.
We all picked the cotton but we never got rich.
Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat.
They oughta get a rich man to vote like that.

...."Well momma got sick and daddy got down.
The county got the farm and they moved to town.
Pappa got a job with the tva
He bought a washing machine and then a chevrolet.

I think we are in great danger of doing away with social safety nets in this country. I think Jim Webb is aware of that tendency even in our own party, and I thank him for that.